He was also very good at superficially solid rebuttals and responses that were hard to counter without providing a short course on the history and context of the issue at hand. I never thought of him as a "good" debater and I vehemently disagree with his public views, but he was very effective in the media and event situations he operated in.

Agreed and well said. I also disagreed with a lot of his views. But, at the same time when I started watching his content, I realized his detractors overstretched the truth about a lot of what he said. Not all of it, but a lot of it.

The South Park version of him put it well:

> Mom, you don’t understand. I’m getting really good at this. I have my arguments down rock solid. These young college girls are totally unprepared, so I can just destroy them and also edit out all the ones that actually argue back well. It just feels so good.

I think that there's great insight in your observation.

To me what's been going on is a shakedown run of the new mediums and how they exploit cognitive defects and lack of exposure in audiences.

In a total Marshall McLuhan "The Medium is the Message" kind of way some people like Shapiro, Trump, and Kirk just naturally groove in certain mediums and are able to play them like Ray Charles plays the piano.

And because society doesn't have any sort of natural exposure to this they're able to gain massive audiences and use that influence for nefarious purposes.

I'm not sure what the solution to this problem is though.

On the one had I think that there is going to be a natural feedback mechanism that puts keeps their population in check (which is basically what we just saw today) but that isn't the most desireable outcome.